About Tom & Kai Gilb

Our Mission is that People use our technology/methods to Win in Project Management/Product Development

The Gilb's are not ‘academic’ – but light, yet focused, and intensely practical.

Tom Gilb and Kai Gilb have, together with many professional friends and clients, personally developed the methods they teach. The methods have been developed over decades of practice all over the world in both small companies and projects, as well as in the largest companies and projects.

Tom is the author of nine books and hundreds of papers on these and related subjects. His latest book ‘Competitive Engineering’ is a substantial definition of requirements ideas. His ideas on requirements are the acknowledged basis for CMMI level 4 (quantification, as initially developed at IBM from 1980). Tom has guest lectured at universities all over UK, Europe, China, India, USA, Korea – and has been a keynote speaker at dozens of technical conferences internationally.

Kai Gilb has partnered with Tom in developing these ideas, holding courses and practicing them with clients since 1992. He coach managers and product owners, write papers, develops the courses, and is writing his book, ‘Evo – Evolutionary Project Management & Product Development.’

Tom & Kai work well as a team; they approach the art of teaching the methods somewhat differently. Consequently, the students benefit from two different styles.

There are very many organizations and individuals who use some or all of their methods. IBM and HP were two early corporate adopters. Over the recent years, 20,000 engineers at Intel have adopted the Planguage requirements methods. Ericsson, Nokia, and A Major Multinational Finance Group use parts of their methods extensively. Many smaller companies also use the methods.

Tom Gilb

Biographical Summary Tom Gilb was born in Pasadena in 1940, emigrated to London 1956, and to Norway 1958, where he joined IBM for five years, and where he resides, and works, when not traveling extensively.

He has mainly worked within the software engineering community, but since 1983 with Corporate Top Management problems, and since 1988 with large-scale systems engineering (Aircraft, Telecoms, and Electronics).

He is an independent teacher, consultant, and writer. He has published nine books, including the early coining of the term "Software Metrics" (1976) which is the recognized foundation ideas for IBM CMM/SEI CMM/CMMI Level 4.

He wrote, "Principles of Software Engineering Management" (1988, in 2006 in 20th printing), and "Software Inspection" (1993, about 14th printing). Both titles are systems engineering books in software disguise. His latest book is 'Competitive Engineering: A Handbook for Systems Engineering, Requirements Engineering, and Software Engineering Management Using Planguage,' published by Elsevier, Summer 2005.

In 2016 Tom released his new management planning book, ‘Value Planning,’ in digital format only.

He is a frequent keynote speaker, invited speaker, panelist, and tutorial speaker at international conferences.

He has published hundreds of papers. One paper (Laws of Unreliability, Datamation, March 1975) gave his Laws of Unreliability (over 22,000 Google hits).

He has guest lectured at many dozens of universities (including U. C. Berkeley, Stanford, Seattle University, London School of Economics, University of Oslo, Technical University of Trondheim, TU Munich, Tampere and Helsinki Technical Universities, University of San Luis Obispo, and The International Institute of Information Technology IIIT Bangalore.

He is recognized as the founder or major driver of several technical disciplines such as ‘software metrics’ and ‘evolutionary project management,’ as well as being an innovative pioneer in Inspections, and the inventor of the planning language Planguage. He is directly recognized as the idea source for parts of the Agile and Extreme programming methods (primarily the incremental cycles). Tom and Kai have recently developed their Agile Inspections and Agile Evolutionary Project Management processes, that are being successfully used by clients.

He consults and teaches in partnership with his son Kai Gilb, worldwide. He happily contributes teaching and consulting pro bono to developing countries (India, China, Russia for example), to Defense Organizations (UK, USA, Norway, NATO) and charities (Norwegian Christian Aid and others).

He enjoys giving time to anyone, especially students, writers, consultants, and teachers, who are interested in his ideas - or who have some good ideas of their own. He is a member of INCOSE (www.incose.org).

His methods are widely and officially adopted by many organizations such as IBM, Nokia, Ericsson, HP, Intel, Citigroup - and many other large and small organizations.

Kai Gilb

Biographical Summary Kai Gilb was born in Norway in 1968. From 1987 lived in South Carolina, Hawaii and Los Angeles for about five years where he studied and worked as a commercial pilot and instructor as well as pursuing a career as a professional windsurfer. Kai did his first workshop with Tom in 1986, and since 1992 has worked full time together with Tom pursuing project management and delivery excellence. When not traveling, Kai now resides in Norway.

Experience from decades of practice from all over the world in both tiny companies with tiny projects, as well as in some of the worlds largest companies and projects, is carefully incorporated through a relentless vision of excellence, farsightedness, clarity, efficiency, practicality, and simplicity.

Kai Gilb, coach -managers, -product owners and -development teams. He lectures, develop and runs workshops. He is writing a book - ‘Evo – Evolutionary Project Management & Product Development.’ He writes papers, develops online training workshops, is consulting worldwide. He assists project managers and teams during the projects startup, middle, delivery and maintenance phases and is called in to save projects that have gone astray.

Kai has a drive to simplify (getting rid of nice but not critical information) and to purify the methods (distinguishing one idea from another). He is a keen observer of 'life' (the methods should reflect what is, not make its own reality) and logical. With this drive and mindset, he is continuously improving the methods.

Kai Gilb was teaching Agile project management long before the term existed (example: in 1993 teaching large corporations, like Ericsson and Nokia, working on large projects (like mobile phone base stations and networks) to divide their projects into weekly cycles of value delivery. Today dividing the projects up into cycles is the norm, but the norm is to do it in regards to the solutions, and not the value. Today, Kai Gilb is in the Agile forefront of changing peoples minds, motivating and teaching people on how to focus on delivering value (quality, improved, enhanced, better systems) as viewed by stakeholders.

His teaching recognizes the challenge of seeing things from a new perspective, and he loves to help people make the necessary paradigm shift.

He is a frequent keynote speaker, invited speaker, and tutorial speaker at international conferences.

His pro-bono activities are focused on all aspects of the Art of Living Foundation where he organizes courses and talks, he teaches, and he enjoys himself.

Kai is also involved with other Environmental (EPA) and Third-World Aid charities or organizations.

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